This Friday 26th September is the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning, where people all over the UK will hold coffee mornings to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support and help those affected by cancer. Macmillan Cancer Supporthave calculated that on the 26th September the average person will be no more than half a mile away from their nearest Coffee Morning, which means over 205,000 are being held across the UK – how cool is that?! The clever folk have also estimated that this equates to 10 MILLION slices of cake and 5 MILLION cups of coffee!!!! (I’m loving that two slices to a drink ratio – my kind of coffee morning!) Macmillan Cancer Supportare aiming to raise over £20million to help those with cancer which is absolutely fantastic.

Macmillan Cancer Support is a charity close to my heart and really does some fantastic work. Their Nurses help patients and their families through their cancer treatment, offering help, support and advice – emotionally, practically and financially. Macmillanalso help campaign for better cancer care and do endless fundraising to better help cancer patients and make sure health care laws put patients first. As you can see, they’re an amazing charity who do some incredible work and are well worth eating some cake in order to support! (And I’m pretty sure cake calories don’t even count when you’re eating them for charity!)

So how can you get involved?

It’s not too late to host your own Coffee Morning – simply sign up on the Macmillan Cancer Support website and they’ll send you a Coffee Morning Kit to help you on your way and also provide you lots of hints and tips on how to make it as successful as possible.

If you’d rather go along to someone else’s event and show your support there, you can find your closest Coffee Morningby using the handy location map on the Macmillanwebsite. You can see whether it’s one being held by an individual, an organisation, a private party or even a good old M&S Cafe.

As well as hosting events, M&S are also offering support by selling these cute Bespoke Coffee Morning Badges by renowned textile and fashion designer Celia Birtwell CBE for a suggested donation of £2 a pack. Marks and Spencer’s are also donating 5p from every sale of coffee and cake in their cafés and 20p for every Victoria Sponge cake sold in their food halls during September. Even more excuse to buy some cake! Guilt free calories wahoo!

You could also bake your own cake to give to a Coffee Morning event for them to sell. Macmillanhave drummed up the support from some absolutely awesome celebrities to get ther favourite recipes – including Alan Carr, Greg Rutherford and even Dame Judi Dench! Check out this delicious looking Mocha Marble Cake from Strictly Come Dancing Strictly Get Baking presenter Claudia Winkleman

Claudia’s Mocha Marble Cake

CUTS INTO: 12
PREP: 20 mins

COOK: 55 mins

** 200g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing

** 200g golden caster sugar

** 3 large eggs, beaten

** 200g self-raising flour

** 2 tsp vanilla extract

** 3 tbsps milk

** 30g cocoa powder, sifted

** 1 ½ tbsp strong coffee, cooled

** 50g dark chocolate, melted

1) Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin with a strip of baking parchment. In a large bowl beat together the butter, sugar and a pinch of salt, with an electric whisk, until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, a little at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift over and fold in the flour, along with the vanilla extract and the milk, then transfer half the mixture to a separate bowl. Stir the cocoa powder and coffee into one of the bowls. Dollop spoonfuls of both mixtures into the prepared tin, alternating between the two. Once all the mixture has been used up bang the tin on the worktop to eliminate any air bubbles. Use the handle of a metal spoon to swirl and marble the mixtures together.

2) Bake for 50-55 mins, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean, cover with foil after 40 mins if it is becoming too brown. Leave to cool in the tin for 20 mins, then lift onto a wire rack to cool completely. Once cooled, drizzle melted chocolate over the surface of the cake and leave to set before slicing.

Yum! Iwill definitely be giving that a try! You can find lots of other celebrity recipes on the Macmillan Cancer Support website.

So as you can see there are lots of different ways to get involved with the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support and help people cope better with cancer.

I can't make a real coffee morning but I've taken part by joining the Virtual Bake Sale and donating a recipe on my blog to that instead 🙂 I love seeing cake get to help such a good cause :)www.hannahbakesthings.co.uk